Monday, June 15, 2009
News The Tiananmen Solution
Posted by Dan Savage on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 1:32 PM
Vaclav Havel has expressed solidarity with the demonstrators pouring into the streets of Iran. I was thinking about Havel today as I read about the protests in Tehran, and wondering if he was going to say something publicly about the protests. Now he has.
The massive demonstrations in Prague in November of 1989 that came to be known as the Velvet Revolution began with protesters—students mostly—being beaten in the streets and ended with the fall of that country's communist regime and chants of "Vaclav to the Castle." (Prague's castle is the seat of government and the presidential residence.) My then-boyfriend and I were living in Berlin in the fall 1989—living in West Berlin—and we'd just witnessed the impossible: the fall of the Berlin Wall.
After the first demonstration in Prague we went to a black market in downtown Berlin, exchanged the last of our money, and boarded a train for Prague. On the way into Prague we saw tanks and troops lined up outside the city, ready to roll in. The Czechoslovakian government was speaking openly of a "Tiananmen solution" to the "chaos" in the streets of the capitol.
Walking around the city the morning we arrived we were approached by three Czech students. After determining that we were not secret police—jeans, leather jackets, and American accents made us likelier to be secret police—they gave us some flyers. They implored us to carry the flyers out of the country with us when we left. They made sure we understood that we would have smuggle the flyers out. We would have to hide them from border guards. We would need to conceal them in our luggage, or rolled up and stuck in our toothpaste tubes, or in our underwear.
Would we take that risk for them?
They took us to the philosophy building at the university and showed us into a study hall with a long table down the center of the room. There were two dozen students seated around the table, each sitting in front of a typewriter. These students were typing and re-typing the flyers we'd just been given. The Czech people had no access to photocopiers—the communist government saw them as a threat—so each copy of the flyer had to be typed out by hand. The students seated at the table typed flyers until they'd produced enough copies to send small groups of students out into the city to look for foreigners who might be willing to smuggle them out of the country.
We stayed in the building and listened to students and professors give speeches in a large lecture hall. One of the students we met on the street translated from Czech to German so my boyfriend could follow along; my boyfriend translated from German to English so that I could. They were certain that a crackdown was coming—the Tiananmen solution—and that many of them would soon be dead or imprisoned. They were keenly aware that they were risking their lives and their futures. Before we left the philosophy building they asked us again to please take the flyers with us when we left Prague, to smuggle them out of the country, to deliver them to newspapers and television stations in the West. That way, weeks or months after it was all over, the world would find out what really happened in Prague.
Now the world is finding out in real time—via Twitter and YouTube—what's really happening in Tehran right now. It's the revolution in more ways than one. And here's hoping that the demonstrators in Iran—like the students we met in Czechoslovakia—live to tell their own stories.
I still have the flyers.
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I'd like to see the posters either on slog or on the Stranger as the Front cover. I can't believe it's been 10 years since the Berlin Wall fell and the world as we knew it back then started to go from 30 mph to 150mph in a very short time.
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Good write-up. Another way to think of it: "They were keenly aware that they were risking their lives for their futures."
The first time I was in Europe was in 2000. I took an overnight train from Paris to Prague, sharing a couchette with 5 other Germans getting off in Leipzig, Germany (former East Germany). One of them was this handsome str8 guy who was probably 29-30 y.o who had his daughter with him, who was probably 8 at the time. They had just come back from visiting Euro Disney, which was probably expensive as hell for them as it is here for most families in the US. I spoke shitty German that I learned in HS but he spoke reasonable English to converse. Upon learning his daughter's age, I remember saying "wow. She's fortunate to grow up in a unified Germany now." He nodded, smile and said something positive that I can't remember now. We spoke for a few more minutes before tending to his daughter to make sure she wasn't feeling out of place in the couchette. I felt really out of place in the couchette since I was the only non German foreigner, who didn't speak that much German and was Black. Everyone else in the couchette was pretty silent and didn't really want to talk. I had sleepless night talking to a couple of other foreigners. And no there was no train sex, unfortunately. I was hoping to run into someone hot on the train that was gay/bi though :-D. I was 21 at the time, but wasn't the obnoxious American that you find in Europe.
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My old boss (born in [West] Germany, now deceased) was at a meeting in Germany when the wall came down. He brought me back a small chunk of the wall, concrete with purple graffiti paint on one side. I treasure it and remember how emotional he was telling me about the initial excitement of German reunification (followed inevitably by some rancor and bitterness over real or perceived inequities in distribution of government funds and high unemployment for years in the East). The other eastern-bloc countries that were not divided seem to have had an easier time of it.
I feel bad, tho - I'm a college student sitting here in my comfy room watching a rainstorm, getting distracted by the internet & doing a little bit of work every once in while, getting all these updates on what's going on in Iran & hearing these amazing stories of other student-instigated revolutions.
I know I'm romanticizing a dangerous - deadly - situation, but I can't help wish I could be involved in something like that. Organizing a gay-rights group in one of the gayest counties in the country really doesn't count ... sigh.
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Thanks for posting this. It's a great read and really human. I was in the Soviet Union, and I did smuggle some stuff out, but nothing as powerful sounding as those fliers. My little brother was in Berlin and helped chip away at the wall and pull people through, he has a piece of the wall that he brought back to the US.
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During the final days of The Shaw's rule in 1979 one of his henchmen, a general boasted that his troops had killed over 10,000 unarmed citizens in one single day.
In 1989 the Chinese government may have taken a lesson from the Shaw in imposing a "Tehran Solution" in Tiananmen Square.
Dad's not the most emotional guy on the planet, but my most concrete memory of when the Communist governments collapsed was seeing him cry as they tore the Wall down. He literally didn't think he would live to see the day.
And now he's in Hospice, trying to find some peace with the lung cancer that's going to take him from us far too soon.
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I'm so sorry to hear about your dad's battle with lung cancer.
You, your dad, and your family are in my prayers.
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Your post brought back a lot of memories of my trip to Prague not too long after yours.
When I was there it felt like home, so maybe there is something to the whole concept of 'heimat' (homeland). I was very tempted to stay and not come back. My German wasn't all that great, but I could sort of get by - and forget about Czech. My dad is 2nd generation Czech (Bohemian - try telling people that is what your cultural identity is and just watch for the strange looks) and told me that his father left home in his teens (in Iowa) and when he visited his mother as an adult (with my dad as a boy in tow) he had to have his siblings translate so that he could talk to his own mother. My grandfather forbade the speaking of any language other than English, but still made sure to drill in to all of his kids (and there were a lot of them) that they were Czech.
One of the best (and somewhat scary) moments was when the guard (cute guy, about mid-20s) came on the train and looked at my passport, saw my last name, and realized that I was one of the returning offspring from those that went to America. Sadly, we didn't have enough language in common for an in depth conversation - but enough to be able to tell that he was glad to see a Czech-American return, and he hugged me, like a returning friend. It was strange...and sweet.
tho i s'pose i'll forgive you if you come up with them later ...
Havel.
I'm glad you were prepared to take the risk. And I'm glad you didn't have to.
1989, was one of the best years, memories of the fall of the wall , the velvet revolution and the fall of the Ceausescus in Romania are still vivid in my memory. I said the good guys (western civilization)have won no more iron curtain finally peace and prosperity for all of us. praying that this change would have had a rippling effect to see finally the peace in the Middle East. Alas, this region is still in turmoil and no forseable change to the better is expected
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